Deanna Hoak

Rachel Maddow has a wonderful piece on the issue Florida is having with voting lines.

I voted for Obama and against Florida’s prejudicial Proposition 2, which would deny same-sex partners any rights, in the first hour of the first day of early voting–my wait was only half an hour, so I was lucky. Right now I am off to give out water at the polls, to those who may not be so lucky.

Get out and vote, folks. Take snacks, maybe a lawn chair. If the line is long, please commit to staying in it. Let’s make a difference.

So I do occasionally search for myself on Google, because I’m always interested in the links I might have missed. This last time, a nifty page from Amazon popped up, showing some of the books in which I know I’m mentioned.

I knew about most of them, but I have to ask: Do any of you know how I’m mentioned in the 2009 Novel & Short Story Writer’s Market? There’s no “Search Inside” feature, and I am of course curious. :)

ETA: Ah. John Joseph Adams was kind enough to include me in his “Blogs Writers Should Be Reading” article for that book. Thanks, John!

You know, my first WoW character was a Hordie, and I always have preferred that faction (though admittedly, the draenei are pretty cool). Now I see reason behind my preference–the Horde prefer Obama:

My daughter, who has a 70 Tauren druid, gasped at about the 2:18 mark: “That pally is saying Obama is a Tauren druid like it’s a bad thing? What an idiot!”

Long-time readers already know that my son has a wild imagination. But today he told me that when he grows up, he’s going to have a sun for a pet–that he’ll become an astronaut, fly up, and steal the sun’s baby.

It’s just…I don’t know. I know we’re all enamored of our kids, but it’s such an enchanting story idea, isn’t it?

Since this is a copyediting subject, I may as well join in the fray.

Andrew Wheeler takes exception to Matt Cheney’s post claiming that “their” is fine as a singular.

I’m firmly with Matt on this one. This usage has gained popularity due to the need to eliminate the utterly silly and sexist use of “his” as a gender-neutral pronoun. Yes, you can usually rewrite sentences to get around the use of a singular “their” (the easiest way to do so is to pluralize the subject, but you can’t always do that), but the sentences often end up sounding stilted and unnatural. Using “their” to refer to a singular subject frequently results in the most natural sentence structure, which is especially important for fiction.

For whomever hit my site searching for “make six figures proofreading books”…

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!

Stop it. You’re killing me.

MSNBC had a fascinating article today on a form of synthetic telepathy being developed by the US Army, to be used for creating voice mail and email:

To those who might be nervous about thought-based communication turning into a sci-fi comedy of errors, D’Zmura says not to worry. Mind-message composition would take specific conscious thoughts and training to develop them. The device would also have a on/off switch.

“When I was a kid I occasionally said things that were inappropriate, and I learned not to do that,” said D’Zmura. “I think that people would learn to think in a way the computer couldn’t interpret. Or they can just switch it off.”

The notion of learning to hide your off-topic thoughts from such a device, and how that might be accomplished, is interesting.

I bought a copy of Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother for a cool local high school teacher I know. I’m hoping she likes it as much as I did and am looking forward to hearing. :-)

If you haven’t read Charlie Finlay’s “Father of Our Country”–his analysis of Obama and McCain as seen through the lens of their relationships with their fathers–you should go take a look. It’s one of the most thought-provoking essays on the candidates that I’ve seen yet.

Music has a lot of power to affect mood, from soothing to energizing to frightening. Every once in a while, a song comes along that will make me smile every time I hear it. It may not affect you the same way (though if you were ever a daydreaming kid who had to play outfield on a Pee Wee baseball team, I can almost guarantee it will), but I thought I’d put it here for you guys to see, in case it gives any of you a smile too. :-)

“Pop Fly” by Justin Roberts:

Will you post a song or video that makes you smile?